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selves be Calvinists; and no genuine Calvinist can feel at his ease if under a pledge to use pleasant words, and to treat his opponents in faith with tolerant civility.

We pass to a brief review of the argumentative ground, upon which it is assumed that pure Calvinism rests. The claim is, that it is predicated of God, in contradistinction to those forms of theology which make the nature and wants of the human soul their basis.

"It" (Calvinism) "is contra-distinguished from that system of truth, which makes man the centre, and evolves all the truths which we are to believe, and the duties which we are to perform, from his nature, powers, and wants. This last, instead of making God's character a guarantee of man's rational responsibilities, of the justice and goodness of the divine requirements and plans, makes man's nature and capacities the measure of God's purposes respecting him, and the rules by which he governs him. The advocate of the former stands, as it were, in the centre of the divine perfections. Through these he sees the doctrines and duties of the gospel; and following their legitimate operation, and confiding in their unchanging integrity, he constitutes them the interpreter of the moral government of the universe. The advocate of the latter, making man the centre, i. e., the central point from which he reasons, sees the great truths of revelation through his nature, capacities, and needs; thereby deciding upon the justice or injustice of the same government. Which of these two stand-points we occupy in studying revealed truth, is of vast importance. In the one we look at them from the same position that God does, through infinite holiness, justice, goodness, and truth; leaving selfinterest out of the question, and simply inquiring what must be the legitimate operations of these boundless perfections, or what they demand. In the other, we look at them from the position of a selfish being, one most deeply interested in their results, and ask what his finite nature, his short-sightedness, demands.

The medium through which we contemplate them cannot fail to affect our views. Look down through that long beautiful avenue, bordered with shrubs, trees, fences, buildings, and the clouds floating in the transparent sky beyond,-all lit up with the glories of the morning sun. From this point the various objects present to your view certain aspects. Then take your station at the other extremity, and look back at the point you now occupy. The several objects, shrubs, trees, fences, buildings, and the distant heavens, tinted with other lights and shades, ap

pear very differently, some of them like other objects. One marked difference, according to the well known laws of perspective, is that those which are near appear large, those at the other extremity of the vista small. So to those who take their stand amid the divine perfections, and contemplate gospel truths through them, God and his glory appear great, and all things besides diminutive; while, to those who make man the stand-point of investigation, man seems great, and all other things, even God himself, comparatively small. The system formed from this latter stand-point is not so properly called "theology" as "anthropo-theology." It will inevitably carry with it some taint of humanity. As it lowers our ideas of God, and consequently weakens our conceptions of those spiritual exercises which cluster around entire submission to his sovereign will and consecration to his service, it modifies, more or less, all the practical duties of the Christian life. It can never inspire the highest type of individual piety, nor constitute the basis of a church breathing the purest spirit of Christian enterprise." (pp. 3, 4)

In another connection we read to the same purport :

"There is no intermediate line of philosophic thought between Calvinism and Arminianism,—the one, as we have previously shown, being evolved from God's nature, perfections, and character; the other, from man's nature, capacities, and destiny. Starting from these respective points, the one advocates the divine glory as the object of highest interest; the other, man's rights and dignity. Hence, one advocates God's sovereignty; the other, man's independence. The one maintains God's justice in constituting Adam the representative of our race; the other, the injustice of such an arrangement. The one maintains the total depravity of humanity, the other denies it. The one defends the necessity of the will-that we always choose according to the preponderating motive; the other, the self-determining power of the will,-its freedom from all influences extraneous to itself. Thus the two systems constantly diverge. They can never be combined into one consistent scheme of theology. As there is no line of philosophic thought running between them, no power of logic can find the combining principle." (pp. 17, 18.)

In the statement of the basis of the Calvinistic theology, which we have thus quoted at considerable length, we find what seems to us a singular mixture of truth and error. Evidently, the perfections of God are the fundamental principles of theology. The mere word implies as much as this. But how do we come to a knowledge of these perfections?

Let it be observed that there are two questions on this point, which we are in danger of confounding. First, we may ask, How do we know that God possesses certain perfectionsthat he is wise, merciful, holy, and good? Secondly, How do we know what these perfections essentially are--what is the nature of wisdom, mercy, holiness, and goodness? It may be said that revelation answers the first question. But what answers the second question? Can argument be needed to show that the nature of man must furnish all information on this point? We can know nothing of the essential attributes of the Divine mind, except so far as we have, in our natures, an experience of those attributes. In every case of reasoning, we must interpret the unknown by the known. We spontaneously assume thus much in the most ordinary affairs of life. To ascertain the length of a board, the carpenter makes use of his rule. In this rule he has something definite-something of which he has reliable knowledge. If the sailor would know the course of his ship, he looks to the compass. If we would know the hour of the day, there is the watch. Now in all these things, we perform what we may properly term an act of judgment; and this act of judgment consists in determining something hitherto unknown, by reference to the known.

Now such, from the necessities of the case, must be our precise method when we attempt to form conceptions of the Divine nature. Every attribute of this nature must be interpreted to our minds by our own conscious experience of the same kind of qualities. Justice for example, is the same thing in every world, and with every being; and to know any thing of the Divine justice, we must ourselves possess the same attribute.

It is absurd therefore to attempt, either in form or in effect, to sever all connection between the divine and the human; and to presume to base a theology on the perfections of God, by excluding all ideas that are practicable of the nature of man. As data for the reasoning process, God and man are indissolubly united. Our experience of the nature of the latter, and only this, can acquaint us with the nature of the former.

And even when Calvinism-as in the case before usattempts to predicate itself of God, to the exclusion of any knowledge revealed by the human soul, a slight analysis

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will show that it has by no means done so. prepared to establish the proposition, that the Calvinistic conception of the Divine Being, is but the magnifying, to infinity, the stern and tyrannical passions of the men who formed the system-men in whom" the spirit of the pugilist" was the ruling element.

And here we would remark, that, in the principle thus involved, we find the root of religious error. A man's theology-as Calvinism very justly assumes turns upon the question, What does he think of God? A mistake here— a false notion of the character of the deity-is the same in the system of religious belief, that poison is in the blood of a human body. It becomes a virus, reaching every thought, feeling, and practice in the believer's life. On this point, there can be no misapprehension or doubt. All religious history is emphatic in its testimony to the same effect. In all ages, the popular conception of the character of the Divine Being has been fashioned in the likeness of man. Corruptible man has created God in his own image; and the god of every age has been but an embodiment of the vices and virtues, the merits and demerits, the excellences and atrocities, which have had the popular approval. In an age of war, the highest idea of a man is, of course, a warrior; and in such an age the prevailing religious idea glories the " god of battles." The conqueror, returning from victory, laden with spoils, his march graced by the presence of his conquered victims, reached the Roman ideal of greatness. With such a people, and in such an age, religious faith pointed to a deity, in whom the soldier was simply magnified. The Calvinistic creed bears the impress of the age that wrote it. The dogmas of total depravity, of a personal devil, of merciless and ceaseless punishment, of inexorable wrath on the part of the Supreme Ruler-these notions may all be traced to one cause ;-man, in his savage state, has made himself the type of deity. And for all this he is hardly censurable. He must judge of God by himself; and of course, he will magnify, in his conception of the divine, those qualities which he approves in himself.

It is therefore only the model man that can attain a true conception of the perfect God, for only such an one will have the representative experience of such perfection. And in the truth of this statement is implied the fundamental

proposition, the soul of man must be the immediate source and interpreter of all truth in theology.

We must think therefore that there is some confusion of ideas in the argument which assumes to predicate a theology of God to the exclusion of man. Our statement would be, that true theology is predicated of God as he is reflected, revealed and interpreted by the model human soul. And such we deem the Universalist "stand-point" of divine truth.

But we are pursuing the theme beyond our original intention. We have only purposed to glance at the new movement in behalf of an obsolete and, we will add, effete faith. We believe the effect will be to hasten the crisis when the revolt from the name of Calvinism shall be as earnest as is the present revolt against its spirit and meaning. Organized schemes for the revival of past theologies, are not in accordance with the processes of nature. Earnest faith is a spontaneous thing. It wells up from emotions at work in the human soul. It cannot be a "got up" thing. Artificial schemes cannot give it life. We therefore rejoice that a movement is begun which will do good in some particulars, which will spur men to be honest in avowing their convictions-which will drive them into a true position--and which, in hastening an issue which must finally come, will, by its own violence, react against a theology which belongs to the past-which can find no sympathy among good, pure, and refined men, and which must therefore the sooner give way to a higher form of theological faith, and a purer type of Christian experience.

G. H. E.

ART. XII.

The Relations of Positive Thought to Religion.

THE influence of a great individuality cannot die. A great man is a great power, an incarnate divinity, metamorphosing and elevating every thing it lays its finger upon,

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